Traditional automated statistical measures, such as average and median, typically operate on numeric values. But a mode, or modal function, is a statistical measure of central tendency that could be valid for qualitative data or text values that is currently performed manually. The modal function normally identifies one or more modal values that are repeated most frequently in a dataset. An employee may use the modal function to manually determine a mode from sets of non-numeric data, such as strings or dates. For example, a person may use the modal function to determine one or more surnames occurring most often in a report, a day of the week during which more orders were placed, and other non-numeric uses.